Archive for August, 2010

Although there are many elements that must work together for search engine optimization marketing to be effective, the SEO page title is among the most important. Effective SEO page titles tell both search engines and searchers what your web pages are about.

When writing SEO page titles, it is important to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords for the page you’re optimizing, while at the same time writing them in a way that will entice searchers to click through to your site from the search results.

Your SEO page title will ultimately determine whether or not a searcher will be enticed to click on the search result for your site. After all, when you do a search on Google, you scan the search results and click on the ones that make the most sense in relation to what you’re searching for. With this said, you need to put extra thought into writing SEO page titles that will rank high in the search engines for your most important keywords and that will convert from searches to clicks.

Keep in mind that your SEO page title acts as the synopsis of your web page to both search engines and potential visitors. Therefore, your SEO page title must be clearly focused on the topic of your web page. As easy as this sounds – most people have a hard time writing effective SEO page titles because they over think the process.

Let’s say you have a product page on your ecommerce site which offers a contemporary black leather sofa made by Natuzzi. When people are asked to write an SEO page title for a page such as this, it is common to see SEO page titles such as ‘Discount Living Room Furniture & Sofa Sets’, ‘Leather Furniture, Sofas, Chairs & Ottomans’, ‘Leather Living Room Furniture & Home Décor’, etc. If any of these examples have made you raise an eyebrow you’re doing good, since none of them will be effective for the keyword searches for ‘Contemporary Leather Sofa’, ‘Black Leather Sofa’, ‘Natuzzi Leather Sofa’, or other combinations directly related to the specific offering.

An effective SEO page title for the example of a contemporary black leather sofa by Natuzzi would simply be, ‘Leather Sofa, Contemporary Black Leather Sofa by Natuzzi’. This would be the choice for the following reasons.

1. More people search for ‘Leather Sofa’ than they do for ‘Contemporary Sofa’, ‘Black Sofa’ or ‘Natuzzi Sofa’, which is why the first words are ‘Leather Sofa’ to reinforce this most important keyword phrase.

2. The rest of the SEO page title of ‘Contemporary Black Leather Sofa by Natuzzi’ is chosen to achieve two goals. First to create an SEO page title that is meaningful to searchers so they know what the content of the page is about before clicking on the search result (which also increases conversion). And second, to tell the search engines the most important information related to the product being offered, which in this case are style, color, material, type of product and manufacturer.

SEO page titles for other topics may not be as obvious to write as in our example. However, in most cases they will be just as easy if you simply look at the core topic of the page you’re optimizing and write an SEO page title that clearly describes what the page is about. For example, if you have a web page about Napa Valley wine tours your SEO page title should include the phrase of ‘Napa Valley Wine Tours’. A web page about golf lessons at a Seattle area golf course should include the phrase of ‘Golf Lessons in Seattle’. As simple as this appears, many people get hung up on trying to brainstorm what they should be writing for their SEO page titles, when the answer is literally right in front of them on the page they are optimizing.

Keep in mind that as with our example of the contemporary black leather sofa by Natuzzi, the most important keywords of ‘Contemporary’ ‘Black’ ‘Leather’ ‘Sofa’ and ‘Natuzzi’ must also be included in the meta tags and within the text content of the web page. By writing keyword rich SEO page titles that directly relate to the topic of the web page you’re optimizing, you will be able to increase your search engine rankings and click-through rates to your site (provided that the rest of your SEO elements are properly optimized).

When was the last time your reviewed your SEO page titles in comparison with the content of your web pages?